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Hannah Smith , hannah.smith@indystar.com
10:12 a.m. EDT July 19, 2014

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Katie Caito, 22, Indianapolis, goes through her Pinterest boards at home. She isn’t married or engaged, but she keeps a Pinterest board of wedding and reception ideas and goals.(Photo: Anna Reed/The Star)Buy Photo

It will take place on a January morning, where brunch will be served around 11 a.m to fewer than 100 guests after Mass. The colors will be navy and champagne, or pink. She's undecided on venues, although it will take place somewhere in the Chicago area. She'll wear a dress with lace and long sleeves, and everything will be covered in glitter. Even though they'll be out of season,

Stout was able to plan so many details of her future wedding thanks to Pinterest. Scroll through her Pinterest wedding board, and you'll find nearly 600 pins of the dresses she likes, the photo poses she wants taken and the type of ring she wants one day. Although she's been dating her boyfriend, Paul, for a year and they've discussed marriage, she is not engaged.

"I had Pinterest way before I even knew Paul existed," she said.

Since its creation about five years ago, Pinterest has become a go-to site for those planning weddings. And there has been an unexpected offshoot: women planning weddings before they are engaged.

The idea of women planning for marriage isn't new. Hope chests or dowry chests used to be fairly common. After that came binders or scrapbooks full of photos ripped from wedding magazines. Pinterest has become a digital hope chest or scrapbook.

And women everywhere are pinning before the proposal.

On TheKnot.com, a site dedicated to wedding planning, a message board titled "Not Engaged Yet" is among the five most popular. Women discuss whether boyfriends will propose, and those on the board who are engaged help "talk down" the pre-engaged women in moments of angst.

In 2012, the number of visitors to TheKnot.com who weren't engaged jumped to 32 percent from 16 percent in 2011. On top of that, 16 percent of brides started planning their wedding before they were engaged, according to a study from TheKnot.com.

"I think that a lot of women admit that they've been planning their fairytale wedding since they were little girls," said Jamie Miles, editor of the site.

Amanda Miller, a sociologist working at the University of Indianapolis, said wedding planning is something women are socialized to do from childhood.

"This is something that we've been told to do since we were very little girls, starting with Disney fairy tales," she said. "Almost all of those involve some sort of princess-y wedding."

But women are getting married at later ages, Miller said, especially for middle-class, college-educated women. Although they're most likely to get married and stay married, they're also most likely to wait longer.

"For the middle class, the marker of adulthood is no longer getting married," she said. "It's finishing your education."

There are also magazines dedicated to pre-engagement, such as Engagement 101, where articles suggest how to propose or what ring to buy, as well as quizzes such as "Is he going to propose?"

Miller said the wedding industry has made it so that wedding planning can be an event that spans years and thousands of dollars — it's become "matrimania," she said.

"It's not about the marriage so much as it is about the wedding," she said, adding that doesn't mean couples don't want to be married. It's just "the party has become more important than ever."

Stout said that's part of the fun in pinning weddings.

"It's just fun to think about it," she said. "It sounds really silly, but I think weddings are the one excuse you can have to just throw an extravagant party, and people won't judge you for it."

People may not judge the party, but as for pre-engagement wedding boards, it could be the opposite. While hope chests remained tucked out of sight, wedding boards — unless set to private — are out there for anyone on Pinterest to find, including significant others.

Stout said her boyfriend is aware of the board and has even discussed it with her.

Katie Caito, 22, also has a wedding Pinterest board, and she's not engaged. She said her boyfriend of eight months, Josh, knows about it and isn't bothered.

"He thinks it's funny," Caito said. "The whole idea of how girls glorify the dream wedding, and this whole idea that we have to have everything perfect."

Miller said Pinterest is huge for letting brides plan their dream wedding, even when that dream might be financially out of reach.

"Dreaming is a response to not actually being able to attain the actual wedding."

Women shouldn't feel embarrassed by their wedding boards, Miles said.

"I think people think it's kind of strange that women are looking at wedding photos before they're engaged," she said. "But because it's more common than people think … I think that makes it even more OK.

"As you're getting closer and closer to realizing you've found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, why would you wait?"